Ether ETFs should begin trading by fall: SEC Chair

What they're saying: Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on Financial Services, Gensler fielded a question about when actual exchange-traded products for ether would hit the market.

• "I would envision sometime over the course of the summer," the chair responded, according to Blockworks.
• The staff is simply working through the final steps, he explained.

The latest: The agency has already told exchanges that they can list such ETFs, now it just needs to approve the individual instruments.

Zoom in: Each blockchain has a native coin that's used to incentivize disparate market participants to provide security services to the network, which is essential because no one person or company oversees these kinds of products.

• Ethereum is the second-largest blockchain, and far more valuable than any of its nearest competitors.
• It uses a proof-of-stake system, where security providers post large amounts of ether (ETH) as a guarantee that they won't attempt to manipulate the network. In exchange, they get paid in issuance of new ETH.

The intrigue: Chair Gensler was asked, as he has been before, whether or not he believed ether was a security under U.S. law, but he again demurred.

• The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, however, answered "yes" when asked if it were a commodity — which would mean it is not subject to SEC authority.

What we're watching: Whether or not the SEC approves individual ETH ETF funds in the order they were received, per normal, or if they all come out at once, as they did with bitcoin ETFs.